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leads from the driveway along the south side of the house to the courtyard (site plan and floor plan drawings, p. 45). The lower level of the house contains the mechanical room, a full bath, and a pair of guest bedrooms. This floor was designed to be converted into a self-contained flat if a live-in caregiver is ever needed. Balance the daylight This house is flooded with daylight, but it isn’t blasted by it. Instead, its architects used a combination of strategies to get light where they want it and to control it where they don’t. Here’s how. Courtyard: This is the big idea in this house, and it serves its sheltering purpose by putting the living room’s shoulder to the prevailing westerly winds. The courtyard is a calm oasis. Just as important, though, the courtyard’s light-colored walls and paving stones bounce light into every room that opens to it. Transom windows: Reaching to the top of the 13-ft. ceilings in the living room, these windows grab more light and extend the views. Skylights: Discreetly located out of sight, skylights deliver daylight to numerous focal points in the living room, kitchen, and guest bath. Motorized shades: Exterior Mecho shades on all west-facing windows (including bedrooms above) are on a timer. They also can be on a light sensor, with a wind override: If the wind gets too strong, the shade retracts. A recipe for serenity A combination of materials, construction techniques, and design creates a striking sense of calm in this house. The entire building envelope was insulated with soy-based open-cell foam. DensGlass sheathing under the fibercement siding, along with sound batts in the interior partitions and floors, limits sound transfer. In the mechanical room, two layers of drywall attached to resilient channels mitigate the sound of pumps and the boiler. The rectilinear lines of the windows, the doors, and the shapes of the rooms, all painted white, make an orderly canvas for understated hardware and elegant materials. There is little in the way of applied ornament. Instead, the parts of the house and their substance set the tone. For example, the stairs are white-oak treads, flanked by aluminum railings that rise like a lustrous pipe organ for three floors (photo top right, facing page). In the kitchen, ash cabinetry, lightly stained to emphasize the swirling grain, is topped with dark-green slate counters (photo right). Drawer pulls are stainless and simple. This same aesthetic is at work outside, where galvanized-steel bars, wire mesh, stuccoed concrete, carriage bolts, and cedar boards are arranged with uncommon grace into rugged fences, railings, and screens. □ Charles Miller is specialissues editor. Photos by the author, except where noted. The topography of cabinets. Lightly stained, the open-grain patterns of flat-sawn ash swirl like the contours on a map of canyon country. They are topped with green slate counters and splashes. Photo taken at E on floor plan. A trailblazing approach to water use and reuse Brent Bucknum of Hyphae Design Lab asks rhetorically, “Why pipe mountain spring water hundreds of miles to flush a toilet?” Good question. California is prone to droughts, and first-rate potable water should be reserved for higher purposes than sending sewage to the treatment plant. The team that designed and built this house worked with Hyphae and the city of Berkeley’s building department to comply with a brand-new code that allows rainwater-catchment systems for indoor use. This house is the first such residential project in Berkeley to receive a permit. Rainwater from the roof is collected in a 2500- Ready for the rain barrel. Domestic water needs are partially supplied by rainwater stored in this 2500-gal. tank. gal. tank buried at the base of the lot. The water is pumped through a series of filters and then into the house, where it is used to flush toilets and do laundry. A gray-water system puts another round of usefulness into this water loop. Everything but the toilets and the kitchen sink drains into a “structured wetlands” consisting of a cast-concrete pond filled with gravel and planted with reeds that filter the water before it flows to an underground sump basin. From there, the gray water is pumped to various irrigation zones. 48 FINE HOMEBUILDING Bottom photo: courtesy of Jetton Construction